


Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:26:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The soulmate marks came in when children were eleven or twelve. A few weeks of a prickly, itching sensation on the underside of your wrist, and you woke up with the name of your soulmate written on your skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Love Can Break Your Heart

The soulmate marks came in when children were eleven or twelve. A few weeks of a prickly, itching sensation on the underside of your wrist, and you woke up with the name of your soulmate written on your skin.

Potential soulmate, at least.

Kahlan, like all Confessors, had been raised with a great reverence for free will, as befitting someone gifted with the ability to remove it.

When she was nearly thirteen, Kahlan’s wrist had itched so badly that she thought she was going to scratch right through her skin, and she had woken up one morning to find an unreadable black smudge on her skin in place of a name.

That happened sometimes; it usually meant that the person in question was beyond the boundary, already Confessed, or otherwise magically unreachable. It had become more and more common since Darken Rahl had started extending his reach beyond D’Hara.

In a way she was relieved. Even at such a tender age Kahlan realised that she would have to keep her distance from anyone she loved, for that person’s own protection.

*

In the years that followed Kahlan thought little of the mark on her wrist, no more than she did the scar from her badly split lip. She had other things on her mind; the war, losing Dennee, finding Richard, defeating Darken Rahl, the ongoing search for the Stone of Tears…

So when her wrist started itching Kahlan didn’t give it much thought. She assumed that she’d been bitten by an insect while sleeping, or brushed against a briar thicket. She bound her wrist with a length of white linen and tried to ignore the persistent itch.

Kahlan had never hidden her mark. Most people did: with long sleeves, elaborate bracelets, or leather gauntlets. It was only those whose marks were illegible, or who had met and fallen in love with the bearer of their name, who bared their wrists.

Richard didn’t have soulmate mark; such magic didn’t exist outside the Midlands, but he had no doubts. He’d once turned over Kahlan’s hand, pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, and said, “I don’t need a magic tattoo to tell me that you’re my soulmate.”

*

"When Zedd gets back you should ask him about a salve for that," Richard said sympathetically, when he noticed Kahlan yet again worming her thumbnail under her bandages.

But it was Cara’s irate, “Will you stop that! You’re like a child waiting for her mark to come through!” that really gave Kahlan pause. Maybe it had taken the magic this long to realise that Richard was back in the Midlands?

She crept away from their camp and tugged the bandage from her wrist, in no doubt that Richard’s name would be there underneath. By the light of the moon she could see the name _Cara Mason_ unmistakably written on her wrist.

Bizarrely, it struck Kahlan that the itching had stopped.

*

Kahlan didn’t bandage her wrist back up, but she did take to wearing her purple dress with the full-length sleeves; she told herself that it was more practical for travel, anyway.

It shouldn’t matter; it didn’t change anything, least of all Kahlan’s feelings for Richard. The Midlands were full of people who were happy with people other than the one whose name marked their skin; and if they went through life with a vague sense of missed opportunity, then it was polite not to mention it.

The soulmate marks were poorly named, they were more of a guideline, a possibility; they didn’t force you to feel anything.

Not that magically enforced love was worth much. As a Confessor, Kahlan knew that better than most.

Kahlan still found herself tugging down her sleeve whenever she was near Richard. And as they travelled, she found her thoughts drifting towards the irony of the soulmate markings. Even if the mark had revealed itself before Richard - and Kahlan wouldn’t give him up for world peace and all the gold in D’Hara - Cara was a Mord’Sith; a loving touch from Kahlan would mean death for her.

Kahlan found herself wondering what Cara might have been like if she hadn’t been broken as a child, and found that she didn’t care to imagine Cara any way other than she was.

Richard must have noticed Kahlan’s preoccupation, because she kept catching him looking at her with sad eyes. She tried to smile back reassuringly. There was no need to feel guilty, she hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about, hadn’t even thought about doing anything.

She knew that she would have to talk to Richard sooner rather than later; hiding her wrist from him was getting increasingly ridiculous. He would understand; it wouldn’t change anything between the three of them. Maybe that was why Kahlan kept finding reasons to put off the conversation?

In the end, it was Cara who forced the issue. The two of them were setting up camp while Richard tried to hunt down something for dinner.

“ _What?_ ” Cara snapped. “You’ve been staring at me like you expect me to turn into a shadrin for days now.”

Kahlan marvelled at how far their relationship had come. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d tried to kill Cara in the blood rage, which Cara hadn’t cared about on any level apart from the one where it might interfere with her protecting Richard, now a few days of awkward silences and covert looks was enough to have her demanding to know what was wrong.

"I—" Kahlan began. Cara had a right to know, surely. "Whose name do you have on your wrist?" Kahlan raised her fingers to lips. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that; it was incredibly rude and invasive.

But Cara wasn’t exactly a stickler for manners. She narrowed her eyes at Kahlan, but the corners of her mouth twitched up. “Why?”

Kahlan fumbled with the laces at her wrist, and her sleeve fell open. “It was just a blur until this week,” she offered.

Cara stripped one of her gloves off and took Kahlan’s hand; she ran her thumb across Kahlan’s wrist as though seeing her name there was proof of… something. “I was a Mord’Sith.

 _Broken_ , Kahlan thought, _magically unreachable_. She desperately wanted to reach out for Cara.

Cara dropped Kahlan’s hand with a start, as though she knew what Kahlan was feeling. She pushed her leather sleeve up her forearm, and Kahlan felt a rush of guilty anticipation.

Where Cara’s soulmate mark should have been there was an ugly raised scar, as though someone had held her wrist to the fire.

"Oh, Cara…"

"One of the first things a Mord’Sith does is burn off her soulmate mark with her agiel. It’s meant to show that no one is more important to her than the Lord Rahl."

"Do you—" Kahlan asked, "do you remember what it said?"

It might not have been Kahlan’s name - the names don’t always match; Kahlan had once been called upon to Confess a man who felt entitled to another’s body just because her name was on his wrist - it might have been Leo or Dahlia’s.

"Yes," said Cara; she and Kahlan were standing very close.

"I—"

Cara turned her back. “My Mord’Sith sisters were right about one thing: nobody can be more important to me than Richard.”


End file.
